mel, i think you're terrific. a magnificent human being. i think about myself at 24 barely being able to tie my own shoes and i look at you, shining, whirling, out somewhere making a pizza in a stone oven and i am in awe.

for my birthday this year i’m going to england! and not just any old england but the south part, near the ocean and the countryside and little signs that use ‘medieval’ as a descriptor. i imagine lines of laundry. i imagine grazing sheep. i imagine a smell, part water part earth, that speaks of history and ancestry and something i've forgotten.

when i get back they’ll be pictures! and stories! and charming tales of the time i’ll get my shoe stuck in a cobblestone!

until then i leave you with spring, which clearly has begun its delightful ascent into summer.

we saw these parent geese and their children going for a sunday swim. we chased them down the riverbank tripping over tree roots and our enthusiasm until we managed to get this shot, as they swam by nonplussed. one parent in the front, one parent in the back and five little ducklings in the middle just paddling their way through the world.

jer and i are leisure time experts. we'll get home from work and be out of our clothes and into a beer in like thirty seconds flat. just, BAM, ok now for some fun.

we do all different things with our leisure time like researching or drawing or reading or cooking or dancing or making out, but the objective is always the same which is to get down to relaxing as soon as humanly possible.

we throw our bags in the closet and our pants on the floor. we chuck our cares out the window and our worries in the black bag that we use to take out the recycling. we sing.

when people ask us if we have plans and we don't have a dinner or a party or a fundraising function to point to we feel (sort of) guilty but the truth is, we're just very busy being idle.

we're not lazy you see, we're campaigning for a leisurely lifestyle. one pantless evening at a time.

i changed this young ladies name from bean to ruth which is the name she came with originally. it seemed funny to call a rat ruth but i caught her smoking cigarettes and cutting coupons in her stretch pants and realized it was actually perfect.

jeremy and i went to the library on saturday and i headed to 'holds' to pick up that graphic novel by the author of time traveller's wife and when i turned around on the little shelf, in the 'best bet' section, there was irma voth. just sitting nicely, waiting.

i read it in two days and now it's jeremy's turn and whenever i read miriam toews i think of you and the idea that laughter makes all uncertain things , shared.

happy weekend! long weekend! joy and rapture! and i don't mean that kind of rapture. although honestly if the world is going to end why not over a long weekend when no one is working and everyone is happy and wearing sunglasses.

i made chowder! clam chowder with carrots and red potatoes and giant amounts of butter and cream! it was very delicious as butter always is. i mean creamy butter. i mean chowder.

and last night we had pitas with olives and tzatziki and tomatoes and cucumbers and hummus and sprouts. mmmm sprouts. did you know that sprouts are a super food? they have so much to offer you'll feel guilty not having anything good to give in return. here take my chocolate almond ice cream bar?

they're packed with vitamins and enzymes and they help you digest and absorb nutrients and live forever.

before you asked me to marry you we found a photo of a barn with a window up high and the light coming in through the cracks and we thought how nice, for a future engagement. and later we'd realized that the barn from the picture and the barn from our party was one and the same and we thought about fate and the human distraction of making plans.

i've come to believe that it's important to share not only our revelations and best smoothie recipes but also our challenges or the things about ourselves we're least likely to volunteer at a mixer for strangers. which is funny when you realize that these attributes are surely no great mystery to those who know you well. sometimes jeremy asks if it's going to be 'one of those days' and i wonder how he could be so rude and then i consider my position, cross armed and stiffed legged over the total length of the couch trying to sieve my frustrations out through my teeth. where does that come from? i used to think i had aspergers syndrome because i can be intensely preoccupied with a subject but then it passes and the subject changes and i think more i'm just really interested in things. and sometimes in the space between learning one thing and the next i'll feel frustrated and short and unsure of how to proceed. reading can get me out of it and time spent with nature and seeing something not new or different, but shown in a way i hadn't considered it before. also jeremy. always jeremy. i heard the kid from the apartment downstairs coughing this morning and i felt angry that he was waking me up on a saturday and i also thought this is why i'd be bad at having kids, their noises aren't something i could control. and then, like every time i think this way i remember my nephew and when i lived in the basement apartment and he'd knock on my door in the early morning and it was the sweetest sound i'd known. life is so many different things at the same time.

we often identify ourselves by our differences. i am a girl and you are a boy. i have long hair and you shave your head. you have a masters and i dropped out of english literature at brock university because i thought partying was more important at the time, (and maybe it was).

i am tall you are short. i have freckles you have none. i am poor and you are rich.

let’s instead consider our commonalities. you are human and i am too. to survive we both need food and water and warmth. to flourish we both need acceptance. we live together on planet earth which is very neighborly when you consider the vast size and foreverness of the universe. we’re both made of molecules and water and some sort of electrical something that moves everything along. we both have brains and hearts. we both have likes and dislikes. we both worry and wonder and want.

i read a quote the other day that stuck with me like the gum you didn’t see coming two sidewalk squares back and it's from lord of the rings and it went like so:

tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?

it’s easy to define ourselves by our relationships and circumstances and wood framed school certificates but none of those things get to the essence of who we are when you shed the stuff that they’re dependant on. the best i can so far figure is i’m a part of the universe which means i am a part of everything else that is part of the universe which means you and i are way more connected than we walk around thinking we are.

i talked to you last night on the phone! we laughed when i called right at 8 on the button like i used to show up at your door, so punctual and enthusiastic. you make me feel enthusiastic.

we've been friends for 8 years now which is long enough to have pictures together that we're both embarrassed of. like the halifax photo in the dark bar. only now i look at that and see our happy faces, under my hilarious hair.

when i think about how much you've given me, it's almost indecipherable from what i've always had but i'll remember you introduced me to that part of myself and feel thankful.

you try and you're loving and you're smart which are all such commendable qualities in a human being. you are a nice human being.

and you're one of the funniest people i know. like comic funny with how you move and how you talk and that time in cuba when your arms flailed and you hit the lamp and you called me a crumb bum.you know what you are stephanie perkins? you're a crumb bum! my favourite crumb bum in the world.